


Holding On

by afterandalasia



Category: Monsters Inc (2001), Monsters University (2013)
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Original Character(s), Parent Death, Sulley Feels, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were words, so many words, that he had wanted to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding On

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, I'm apparently writing a lot of angst lately. More headcanon about Bill Sullivan and what went on in Sulley's childhood -- I know Sulley was supposed to be a sort of jock/frat boy character in Monsters University, but there were many times when he felt almost childlike to me. So I suppose this ties into that a lot.

Getting kicked off the Scare Programme was bad enough. The Scare Games were the last straw. After one last, huge argument -- one last roaring, window-rattling, furniture-breaking argument -- Sulley moved out, for good, and he and Mike ended up with a slightly crummier apartment than they would otherwise have been looking for. Mike asked just enough questions to realise what was going on, but didn't push too far, even when Sulley's light stayed on through the night and when he lingered near to the phone but didn't pluck up the courage to dial.

They got their jobs in the mail room, and Sulley might have disparaged work when he was younger but suddenly it was... not fun, but certainly enthralling in its own way. Mike immediately set them targets, and Sulley found that he _liked_ targets, because of the feeling of accomplishment when they reach them. Then it was working in the canteen, then as janitors.

The day that they started can wrangling, he called his mother, so excited that they barely said their hellos before the words spilled out of him. His mother chuckled and made small encouraging noises, but as the first rush left him, he realised that part of her is almost... not there.

"Mom? Is something wrong?"

He could hear her take a deep breath. "Your father's in the hospital. They aren't sure what it is yet, but he was fine just a week ago."

"Oh god, Mom, I'm so sorry. Is there anything..." His voice failed him. He could have sworn that his heart skipped a beat in his chest.

"He wants to see you."

"I'll... I'll be there tomorrow evening."

"Thank you, Jimmy."

She was the only one who called him that anymore. Sulley almost gasped for breath, trying desperately not to cry, and told himself that it wasn't as bad as the terrible black fear surrounding him would make him think.

 

 

He hoped in vain. Bill Sullivan died that night, and Sulley's visit to the hospital turned into a visit to his mother. He couldn't even cry, because she was the one doing the crying now, and he just felt sort of lost and a stranger in the house in which he grew up.

He assured his mother that he would try to sleep, which was not a lie but made him feel guilty anyway because he could be sure that he would not. His room had been half packed up, all boxes and bare furniture, everything that he left behind still there. A couple of ripped posters and faded newspaper articles were still on the walls, a corner peeled away here and there. One of them was the article about Monsters Inc.'s hundredth anniversary, with his father standing proudly beside Mr. Waternoose (II) and, rarest of things, smiling.

_"I'm glad to be retired. So I'll never have to see the shame that is my son working in the mail room."_

Sulley drew away from the poster again, and sat on his bed with his back to it. It didn't creak; he suddenly missed that about his bed back in his apartment.

"I'm sorry, Dad," he said aloud. His room swallowed up the words, and there was no response. Now there never would be.

 

 

"I don't know if he'd even want me there."

His mother pressed the tie into his hand. She was shaking. "I need you there, Jimmy."

 

 

Sulley sat in the front row of the chapel, aware of the eyes on the back of his neck, and was just relieved that he was not asked to speak. Instead his aunt, Christine Sullivan-Bleak, gave the eulogy, and made sure to thoroughly praise how scary he was, how dedicated he was to his profession. There was at least a paragraph about his devotion to his wife and son.

It was like hearing about... a stranger. Though Sulley supposed that people always said the best things that they could about people during eulogies. It meant that it wasn't like hearing about a real person.

He stood between his mother and aunt afterwards, to shake hands and mumble thanks to each monster for coming today. Most of them were ex-colleagues from Monsters Inc., but some were retirement associates, old neighbours, even schoolfriends. All saying that if there was anything they could do to help, _you just need to ask_.

With each person, his eyes dropped lower, until he was muttering at people's chests and stomachs instead of to their faces. It caught him by surprise when a pair of scaled hands wrapped around his, and the offers of condolences were varied by:

"Mr. Sullivan. I'm very sorry that we should meet again in this way."

He looked up sharply, and almost stammered: "Dean Hardscrabble."

"Not today." Her voice was less harsh than he had heard it be on many occasions, and with her wings folded right back and all of her feet on the ground she wasn't such an aggressive presence. "Your father and I were friends once, you know. Or perhaps not, with that look of surprise."

"I, uh, didn't get to meet my father's colleagues much," Sulley offered. He felt an urge to shuffle away and hunch down to minimise his bulk, as if he was all limbs and gangliness again like he had been when he was still growing.

"No." There was sympathy in Hardscrabble's tone. "None of us got to meet you, either." She looked around, towards the gardens that spread down from the crematorium. In a few days, they would scatter his father's ashes here. Monstropolis did not have large areas of space to turn over to graveyards, and monsters had always felt safer leaving nothing behind them. "Do you still go by Jimmy?"

"It's Sulley now, mostly," he admitted. "Or James."

"James, then. Call me Hardscrabble, or Abigail if you wish." The very thought of it made his throat want to close up, but she started towards one of the paths with a small gesture for him to follow. "Or go without names, it that would make you more comfortable."

"Thank you." It came out a mumble, as he sloped along behind her. A glance over his shoulder reassured him that his mother and aunt were among the others, talking in muted tones. He wasn't needed there right now.

"We parted on optimistic terms," said Hardscrabble. Her words were casual but careful, each one enunciated very clearly. She slowed for a moment to touch one of the flowering roses that drooped down from the arches over the path, then simply ducked her head beneath it. "I am sorry that we meet again on ones which are... less so. I hear, however, that you have been making your way up through Monsters Incorporated."

"Scarer radio, huh? My Dad always say- said," it stung to change tense. Even after their fight, and being away for the years, it hurt in his chest and in his gut to say it. "That news travelled among old scarers."

"That is true. Even at the University, we still hear a lot of what goes on in the factories. But let me assure you, James, that everything I have heard has been positive."

He wasn't sure what to say. "Thank you," he went for again.

Hardscrabble stopped so abruptly that he almost stumbled over her tail. He was getting a little better at containing the clumsiness, but it was more practice than actual improvement. "I told you once that you surprised me. Perhaps it would be better to say that you are a surprise. Your father did not talk much -- about anything, for that matter, but those of us who heard him talk about you knew that he was proud of you."

Sulley grunted, unimpressed, then realised just how much that had sounded like his father and felt another tremor of grief run through him. "Sure didn't seem like it. He was always pushing me harder. Never was good enough."

"Your father... was an excellent scarer, James. Gifted, but determined as well. He lived for scaring. Now, don't look away like that," she added, lecturer tone creeping back into her voice until Sulley looked back sheepishly. "But he never was particularly good at expressing himself."

"He made enough clear."

"I only spoke to him once after the... end of your academic year. It was not to ask me details of what had happened, which might be a good thing, because I'm not fully sure that I could explain it. It was to ask me what to do."

Sulley's eyes had drifted away again, almost of their own accord, until he was watching the snapdragons trying to catch flies down by the river. It was easier than listening to Hardscrabble's words, spoken in that implacable way which somehow made them undeniably true. He gasped, though, at her statement. His father never asked for... well, anything. He might order, or demand, in Sulley's experience, but not once had his father asked. Certainly not for anything that came too close to help.

"Not in such words, of course. Bill Sullivan was a proud man. But he asked whether the university intended to take further action, whether other options had been considered, and knowing how he spoke I could read between the lines well enough. He did not know how to speak to you, James, and I think he did regret that."

A flash of anger broke through his other emotions. "He spoke to me well enough. You know those games they do for kids, see how loud you can roar and it tells you how scary you're supposed to be? We had one of those. It had little marks up it whenever I hit a new best, from when I was in elementary."

"He wanted you to do well. He may not have gone about it the same way as your friend Michael, but he meant well." Hardscrabble sighed. "I advised him that only you would be capable of explaining what had happened, and that he should not write you off. And I meant it."

He wasn't sure what to say to that. "Thank you?"

"It strikes me that you learnt a lot, James, during your time at university. Perhaps not in the classrooms-" he winced again at her words "-but about life in general. I would advise that you do not stop learning. It is making you a far more... rounded person."

Perhaps... just perhaps, Sulley thought, he knew what she meant by that. He had _done_ scaring, of course, and then for a while he had _lived_ scaring as Mike had trained them so hard. Even when it had not been the only part of his life, it had been the pinnacle, the most important thing. More important, even, than other people. Perhaps it was time to relax that a bit.

"I'm not giving up on Scaring, you know," he said. It came out defensive. "They have try-outs at Monsters Inc., not like some of the bigger ones."

"Usually for those monsters who could not afford to go to university." She paused just a moment too long, but at least did continue. "Or those for whom it was not the right path. I'm waiting on the day that you impress me, James." From her, it wasn't an insult, Sulley knew. It was more of a promise, an expectation. One coming from a powerful source, at that. "Now go on, and don't even think about starting to thank me again. It doesn't befit you."

He just nodded and backed away a couple of steps before turning to walk back to the others. His mother would need him; he knew how the pain came and went, in waves. For one moment, he glanced over his shoulder, in time to see Hardscrabble carefully pluck a rose to cradle in her claws. There were a lot of his father's colleagues at the funeral today; some of them still even worked for Monsters Inc. He wasn't sure whether or not that meant that his father was the first one of the generation to have died. Monsters Inc. was changing anyway, bringing in some new system to match children to monsters, rather than only using the information on the children's fears to determine the scare used. Mike had been talking about it for weeks.

Despite the warmth of the day, he felt chilled, and lowered his eyes to the ground as he made his way back up towards the group of people clustered at the rear of the chapel. His mother slipped out of the crowd and up to him, putting one hand to his arm. "Are you okay, Jimmy?"

"Yeah, Mom." There was a lie there, of course; he could not be okay on a day like this. But he was as okay as he could be, and from the way that she squeezed his arm he could tell that she understood. "I'm hanging on."

"Good." There were depths of hope in her words. "Let's... keep hanging on."


End file.
